Hmm, reading the subscription part of the EULA, you don’t get any support there either (§3.1). Only the “Teams” license models have support mentioned (§§4.2 and 5.2); otherwise, it is explicitly excluded (§1.6).
I am really curious now what the big announcement will be.
Being a cynical soul this is what I’d do if I was monetising support. I’d announce it, ‘We want to respond better to our Customers so for a quick and easy $99/yr you can have peace of mind that you can call up our Support Teams for same day support and get access to a range of 2nd rate tutorials for all your licensed products (that you could easily find on YouTube)’ .
Think of it as the opportunity to pay extra for something that was previously free or expected but it’s embellished a bit with extra crud.
Think of it as an Applecare equivalent but for software, you pay for something you don’t need but are made to feel it’s in your interest to pay it and anyone not on the ‘Teams’ support can take a hike, is says so in the EULA…
If I was running a business and was looking to extract value from every part of the operation it’s a logical step.
Paid support programs also drastically reduce the number of support calls/emails which is another reason why companies introduce these programs.
Not saying Maxon is doing this but the word ‘exciting’ really got me thinking about what excites a CEO more and it’s surely the thought of more money.
I have no idea whether we need to interpret the EULA in this way. So far, I can only look at the pure source text. I don’t have the prior EULAs available to compare the texts, either.
But I can’t exclude your interpretation… well, we’ll see what the announcement will tell us.
So far, there are four levels of different support anyway (which the EULA doesn’t differentiate at all): Cineversity (which is now lost to me as I am a lowly Perpetual user, but it isn’t mentioned in the EULA by name at least); general user/application support (which I haven’t used in the past); development support through the PluginCafé (which I did use and which was really helpful over the years); and the “wishlist” form (which is pretty much a black hole as you cannot see what is actually picked up and developed). I don’t know what the EULA even refers to with the word “support”.
The most positive interpretation would be: it will be announced that Cineversity will be publicly available for everybody on YouTube (or Vimeo, whatever). This would be cheap to implement, take away a part of the criticism towards the late licensing changes, and maybe even attract some more users who can now see what can be done with C4D. The old Cineversity may get transformed into something new, maybe even under a different name. The direct support on the other hand… no idea how that will look or how the EULA wording comes into play there.
When companies want to charge for things they used to give away free they change the name and they add a few extras that make it look sufficiently different to legitimise the cost.
Cineversity only covers C4D stuff, how about a new ‘xyz_versity’ which includes C4D, Red Giant and Redshift Tutorials, access to priority support for users, plugin developers and other must haves for the same super cheap price of the old cineversity?
Cineversity would then no longer be free to subscribers because it no longer exists, it’s replaced by something you have to pay for.
I worked for a US biomedical corporation that did a very similar thing with their support contracts. Their support division was a business unit in its own right and made vast sums, as much as the actual product division and often it looked like the product was just a reason to provide a support contract.
The biggest update in years…is still yet to happen. This release makes R17 look like a monster Houdini release!
Headline release is an erstaz Blender UI. Honestly WTAF!
There have been some pretty poor updates to c4d over the years, but this takes the biscuit. What a total let down.
Well, what beautiful timing. I had to pay my annual sub a week ago, before this ‘update’. Of course I get to play with C4D for another year (and who knows what S26 might bring) but Holy Jeebus this is a smack in the chops. Whats new? Sweet FA is what’s new. A new UI (who asked for that?) and some motion tweaking graph thingy. That’s. It.
Honestly, if I’d known this was coming I’d have held onto my £550. In fact I wonder if it’s too late for a refund because this is grade A bullshit. There’s simply no point me downloading this because it will presumably just mess with my collection of plugins. What an absolute crock.
Thanks Adobe Dave, your work here is done.
EDIT: Refund requested. Now to get Octane working in Blender.
Did you any of you see the live Maxon presentation? Oh My…
The quality of the presentation was as low and as amateur as I have seen. None of the Maxon presenters had anything more than a potato camera and all sounded like their mics were made from bake bean tins and string. There was absolutely no expense used in this production.
The showreel they had on loop looked tired, check out a Houdini Mograph showreel from SideFX and see where the state of art is. There’s a reason why Houdini is becoming synonymous with Mograph.
The big thing for me was the obvious shift away from C4D as being the lead product and it’s now Maxon One as the main product they’re pushing.
I can say I feel for you. It must be gutting.
Yeah, talk about low rent. McGavran couldn’t even be arsed to put up a poster.
I’ve felt this coming for a few years, but now I’m really sad and angry. Feel like my days with C4D are coming to a close because of some penny-pinching Yank with zero passion or vision, expect for dollar signs. I’ve spent a small fortune on plugins (including a recent renewal of X-Particles), so I’m hoping I can at least roll back to my previous perpetual version and use that until I’m kicked out of Maxon’s crappy ecosystem for good. (And, frankly, if it’s R21 or R22 it wouldn’t make a whole heap of difference, given the last few years’ piss-poor updates.)
For once Maxon is listening to you and making it easier to transition to Blender with their new UI and you’re still not happy?
What else do you want? What more can they do to support the competition?
Redshift RT sounds interesting… but it’s still beta and who knows if it’s going to cost extra when it’s ready.
In any case, it looks like I’ll save another 600 euros or so this year. Let’s see how long R21 can serve me…
R25 is where me and C4D part ways. After 20+ years.
Whoever calls the shots at Maxon these days, does not know what the F they are doing.
I can squeeze perhaps another year out of R23 - But will be taking my business elsewhere for the future.
Hey Eric are you on R21 perpetual? Do you avoid paying the sub – I need to rollback if that’s the case.
Yes R21 perpetual. The toolset is enough for my needs, it plays nice with unreal, it’s costing me as much as Blender and I don’t need to relearn everything.
I was still open to add a subscription on top of my perpetual license to stay current if anything big had materialized (new object manager, new integrated renderer, new particles etc…)… but even with an open mind this one looks like a joke.
Sorry to ask but how do you do it, just download it from Maxon.net? Do you need to do anything to keep it licensed?
No need for an open mind. It is definitely a joke.
EDIT: There’s actually very little of interest (to me) in R23/S24/R25 that isn’t already in R21. Rolling back won’t be an issue at all!
Capsules( Nodes in Object managers) are okay.
Other than that i did not see anything that have been added to consider this a whole digit release. 24.1.
@Darth_Mole : I installed it when it released… that’s all. Do you have a perpetual license? If you’ve traded it for a cheaper subscription, then you may not be able to go back. I’m not sure how it would all work for you.
@bullit: I need to have a look at the node capsules… I haven’t seen anything about it yet.
Is there any demo of Redshift RT yet?
I was on perpetual licenses/MSAs until it changed to annual subs, last year I think? I’ve definitely paid enough money to deserve a perpetual license.
Unfortunately ‘deserve’ means nothing to Maxon. If you converted your perpetual licence to subscription, you’re screwed. You gave up your perpetual licence for a subs licence.
I’m in the same situation as Eric - I remained on R21 perpetual, and am very glad I did. I’ll probably use it until I can’t, then move on.
I like working in C4d, but I don’t know if I can continue to have it as a hobby since my career requires less and less motion graphics. I don’t think I’ll be renewing my sub - I’ll have R21 to fall back on. I’ll be missing out on those sweet UV updates that came later.
I"ll explore blender more deeply in the mean time. Cycles X flies on my 2070 super.
The good news is that If I just can’t stand blender, I can restart my subscription at any time for the same cost, no more FOMO. Perhaps I’ll wait and see what s26 brings and take another look. Perhaps I’ll try R25 for a month.
I was hoping R25 would bring a one GPU Redshift license included or at least Redshift RT included (not an open beta) as it reminds me of eevee. That would be all I need - a real time (ish) engine that translates to full redshift when needed.
I’ve been weighing it for some time. I have a 16 core Ryzen system that I was considering getting Corona C4d for, then I managed to win a Newegg 3080TI - which was DOA and had to be returned. So I’m stuck with a single 2070 super for GPU based renders and no GPU’s in sight.
C4d is in the awkward position of not really being fast at CPU rendering without additional cost, and having no built in GPU solution. I’m sure I could optimize physical to run pretty fast - but why bother investing time into learning nodes and such on an old engine with no more active development? Corona is faster. Redshift is faster. Both are yet more $$$.
Ah well, those are my ramblings.